Publishing: Indigestion at the Digest

The advertising industry has been
attacked so often that it might scarcely have noticed one more critical
book, but the Reader's Digest was not so sure. At the very last moment,
it stopped publication of The Permissible Lie, by Samm Baker, on the
grounds, as Digest President Hobart Lewis put it, that "advertising is
good for business and business is good for the country."

The book was scheduled to appear last week, and 5,000 copies had already
been printed. But the Digest was adamant. "Reader's Digest has a point
of view," declares Lewis, "and, it seems to me, has a right...